I am not going to ride it out in my 110 yr old house that shook during a MAYBE cat 1/strong tropical storm last year. I am going out to the north side of town to my brothers house if it comes this way; he has generators (YAY A/C) and it is a better part of town.

If things get really bad, I may need a place to go after the storm that is not anywhere in Florida.

I am really hoping that the cold front coming through tomorrow (Wednesday) pushes the storm away, but it might be too early and not do all that much to change the path.

No way to reason with hurricane season. All of FL is now under a declared state of emergency. CAT 4/Cat5 when it hits, looks like it goes up the middle of the state, and it is big enough that it will cover the state e/w as it does.

We have obligations to the clinic, so can't leave, but both our house and the clinic are in non-flood zones and relatively far inland. House was built in 2006 (clinic in the '60s, but it's a giant block of concrete). Also have a 5.5KW generator with about 15 gallons of gas ready to go. It'll power my two 5050 BTU window AC units, and allow us to keep a decent amount of lights on. Also on city water, but I've got two five gallon beverage jugs coming in to fill with water in case something cuts it off or it gets contaminated.

Anyway, I'm concerned, but not enough to evac at this point. This new trajectory is looking a little better too.

We're going to ride it out too. I'll be zombie proofing my house though. No plywood to be found anywhere nearby, but I did just replace part of my fence so I'll be boarding up the windows with the old fence panels. Not the best method, but better than nothing I suppose. I'm about as far inland as you can get in Florida so I hope we'll be OK.

So engineering question. If my back patio is covered would it be better to try to cover all the windows (two sliding glass patio doors and two smaller windows) or use the 8 foot fence panels to basically build a fence around the patio? I do have screws to strengthen the panels since the slats are just nailed on. My neighbor says this might create a wind tunnel or something and cause more harm than good.

@CrazyJoe said:
So engineering question. If my back patio is covered would it be better to try to cover all the windows (two sliding glass patio doors and two smaller windows) or use the 8 foot fence panels to basically build a fence around the patio? I do have screws to strengthen the panels since the slats are just nailed on. My neighbor says this might create a wind tunnel or something and cause more harm than good.

Generally I have heard that affixing things to your home is the best method. Creating additional structure could result in more things for the storm to make into projectiles. I would take the extra time to make sure that none of the boards that make up those fence sections could come loose. Boards are very dangerous in hurricanes.

@CrazyJoe said:
So engineering question. If my back patio is covered would it be better to try to cover all the windows (two sliding glass patio doors and two smaller windows) or use the 8 foot fence panels to basically build a fence around the patio? I do have screws to strengthen the panels since the slats are just nailed on. My neighbor says this might create a wind tunnel or something and cause more harm than good.

Hands-down affix to your house. Aerodynamic forces on free-standing flat plates are much, much higher than extra surface roughness on a big box firmly anchored to the ground. You would need to have no gaps and strong joints between your porch roof and any fence you built plus no gaps between slats. Your "fence" would need to be sunk a couple of feet into the soil and anchored with concrete like a real fence.

OK, follow up question. I've been going back and forth, but is it even worth it to board up the main windows with the fence panels? Some people have said that the fence panels may do more harm than good and that they'd become projectiles if they were to be blown off the windows.

@CrazyJoe said:
OK, follow up question. I've been going back and forth, but is it even worth it to board up the main windows with the fence panels? Some people have said that the fence panels may do more harm than good and that they'd become projectiles if they were to be blown off the windows.

What exactly do you have? Can you give us a picture of the "fence panels" so we have a better understanding of what you're working with?

@CrazyJoe said:
I do have screws to screw them down rather than the staples that are in there now.

I think if you were to use four screws per board in place of the staples they might be fine. I'm not an expert on air pressure though. I'm not sure if wind getting into even those small gaps between each board would create some weird high pressure between the outside and the windows. This might be a case where full sheets of wood are the only sure measures to protect windows from wind and debris.

If you were to screw these in front of windows, it is my opinion that it would prevent smaller debris that would normally break a window from breaking a window.
Keep in mind about where you screw these to though, make sure you aren't just screwing it into siding. The screws that hold them to the house need to hit structure (studs/headers, etc. Your best bet (based on what I know from constructing houses up here) is to place the screws within 1-3 inches around the window. A window has to be framed to hold it in place and that will include usually a double 2x4 on the vertical sides and a header of some kind above the window (usually 2x8 or larger), and 2x4 on edge underneath.